State-owned Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd has revised the price band for its initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs 345 crore ($47.64 million) and extended the subscription offer by three days.

The IPO received weak response from investors with only 67 per cent of the shares on offer being subscribed on the closing day on Wednesday. Investors bid for about 19.7 million shares, compared with the 29.2 million shares the government had put on the block, stock exchange data as of 1130 GMT showed on Wednesday.

The defence shipbuilder has revised the lower end of its price range to Rs 114 from Rs 115, while the upper end was maintained at Rs 118 for the IPO. Garden Reach has also extended the subscription offer till October 1.

The government had initially planned to sell 20 million shares. The company's financials do not depict any particular growth trend given the “lumpy” nature of the cyclical ship-building business, Centrum Wealth Research said in a pre-IPO note.

The offering is part of the government's plan disclosed last year to sell up to 25 per cent of its stake in four state-owned companies under the control of the department of defence.

Earlier this year, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd's IPO did not manage to get full subscription, prompting the state-run military aircraft manufacturer to price its offer at the bottom end of the range, and raising a lower-than-expected Rs 4,113 crore for the government.

IDBI Capital Markets & Securities and YES Securities (India) were managing the Garden Reach Shipbuilders IPO.

($1 = 72.4200 Indian rupees)

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